NATURE OR DAMAGE- WHY ARE WE GAY?

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Please give your thoughts to this question. It seems everybody in the straight world has an opinion that they are willing to voice, and it seems very little time is spent discussing this amongst ourselves, or at least I feel it's time I at least seek to answer this question for myself. [/b]

Do you spend a lot of time wondering why heterosexual people are heterosexual? Do you think we need to find a "cause" to waggle our fingers toward that will supposedly explain straight lifestyles? Do you similarly worry if heterosexuals might be the way they are only because someone "damaged" them?

If so, if you're the sort of person who wonders about absolutely everything under the sun . . . fine, but you might to clarify that so others won't misunderstand your views as insulting to them. If you think the above questions need answering for homosexuals but not for heterosexuals, I find that point-of-view dangerously close to homophobic, so you'll want to tread carefully starting now.

While I certainly can't speak to how your brain works or to the mental machinery of everyone else that will eventually read this, society-at-large typically only spends a lot of time fussing about the supposed etiological bases of behaviors it has labeled pathological or otherwise undesirable. If Very Average Joe doesn't have a personal problem with a particular behavior, he decides it just "is," and that's just fine and dandy. If Very Average Joe feels the need to overanalyze something or otherwise poke it with a stick (metaphorically speaking), that's usually predicated on his notion that he'd like it to go away, and that identification of a cause is the first step toward eliminating the thing he doesn't like. But if he doesn't have a personal problem with the thing in question, then he imagines it's "natural," it "just is."

Like all the various homosexual animals with whom we also share the planet. They just ARE, that is. People who spend a lot of time worrying about why homosexuals are the way they are usually fail to notice or intentionally leave out how nature (other than the parts involving homophobic humans) finds homosexuality entirely natural.

Do you think we need to find a "cause" to waggle our fingers toward that will supposedly explain straight lifestyles? Do you similarly worry if heterosexuals might be the way they are only because someone "damaged" them? If you think the above questions need answering for homosexuals but not for heterosexuals, I find that point-of-view dangerously close to homophobic . . . "

HEAR, HEAR!

This reminds me of one lesbian's stand-up comic routine . . . I wish I could remember who and I'd credit her, but her name eludes me now. But she said several folks had asked her over the years if she was queer because she'd had some sort of bad sexual experience with a man, something so bad it "turned her gay."

Her response was, "As IF! Honey, if having bad sex with a man is all it would take to make a lady love the other ladies, lesbians wouldn't be 5-10% of the female population, we'd be more like 99%."

I (another lesbotronic admin) just read this, and thought of some more responses, along the lines of but a bit different than what my partner said above.

Throughout most of written history, lesbians have existed. Personal expression based on how bigoted/homophobic a society is/was vs. how enlightened/progressive/intelligent has varied in various historical "places" over time. Based on that, different societies/places have had a greater or fewer number of lesbians that felt able to be "open" about who they were and express themselves publically, like the heterosexuals do, more or less. BUT, the lesbos have always been around and always will be around . . . as long as humans are around, that is.

Different people have different answers for the above . . . some evolutionary, some spiritual, some existential, but whatever you believe about the questions immediately above, THAT IS WHY lesbians also exist.

Call it "Mother Nature," if you like. There just ain't no universal cause above and beyond that, certainly not one universally invoking "damage," as the title to the post starting this thread implied as at least a possibility for many lesbians. It IS nature, lesbians are a part of "nature," no doubt, no controversy.

If you think otherwise, please go fantasize about that with Jerry Falwell and his demented minions on some right-wing nutbag site. That sort of nonsense won't be tolerated here.

I've dated both men and women. My last relationship was with a man. It didn't work out. Needless to say, no matter how often we try to do something normal, if it isn't normal for us, then it isn't going to work.

Damage or Nature? I don't think it is either. I can honestly be attracted to some men. But they are usually in drag, LOL. Or they are very feminine. Why is that? I sometimes think it is because I am open minded.

Maybe some of us have the capacity to see outside of gender to the core of a person and use what is inside to decide whether or not we want to get to know that person better or not.

I'm not so sure anymore. I know that I'm drawn to more feminine people whether they be male or female or somewhere in between. Some butch women are really attractive to me. I'm all over the place, I know.

While it doesn't matter in that we have a right to our sexuality no matter how it got here, it does matter in that if that sexuality is - even in part - the result of psychological trauma then knowing that would help us help each other.

Here are my beliefs...

I believe that sexuality exists on a continuum. Think of a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being so homosexual that you can't have friendships with people of the opposite sex, 5 being perfectly bi-sexual, and 10 being so heterosexual that you can't have friendships with people of the same sex.

I believe that everyone is born being a 5 - perfectly bi-sexual. And that our experiences in our pre-puberty years push us around on that continuum. Then during our adolescent and teenage years our sexualities solidify and become unchanging.

I consider myself to be a 2 on the scale I mentioned before. Given what I've stated about my beliefs, you can extrapolate that I experienced some big pushes as a child and believe that they influenced my final, adult sexuality.

If I am correct in my thoughts and beliefs then anyone on the extreme ends of sexuality (homosexual or heterosexual) can be assumed to have also experienced some big pushes in childhood.

Since I also happen to believe that it's important to consider people's psychological make up when interacting with them, I would find this information to be very important to me in all interpersonal interactions.

In conclusion...

While I am not a scientist and therefore cannot actually prove that any of the above assertions are correct, I have found these assumptions to be very useful to me in my interpersonal interactions and have never found an instance in which they were determined incorrect.

I think, that orientation(any orientation, i mean) is a result of genetics and psychology. I do not say, there is anything wrong with us. We really do know why different people have different colours of eyes or blood group, remember your biology lessons. We won't be angry if somebody asks us: why do you have mm... green eyes, will we?
Just have always wondered, why this simple question causes such emotional storm. It resembles me of fighting homophobs. We say: they fight because they are afraid. Ok, but what we are afraid of when we refuse to ask ourselves why are we gay? Maybe, we're afraid of that this is not normal? It seems,that social opinion has a power over us too. And if somebody asked the same about asexuals(insert anything)?
You say - we can see homosexuality in nature, and we are part of it. Of course, but why? And what was it made for? Man and woman is undestandable : children. But i can also ask what are children for, and of course,what are we,people,for. Homosexuality does not fit in the genetic program, but it exists. It is easier to say *we will never know why*. There can't be an answer for the whole humanity, but i'm searching for the answer for myself. A bit too active mind, eah.
Question *Why* is more the way of thinking. I'm a historian, i do live with this *why* and *what for*.
Ordinary heterosexual person does not have a reason to think about the origins of his\her sexuality, because is perfectly fitting in the main social model. When you are not fitting, your eyes open wider,that's all.
So, let's just stay ourselves and open our minds to the whole world.

I personally think it is nature (both gender identity and sexuality), just like being straight and idenifying as 100% male of female, its totally nature (not a sin or some horrible defect needing fixing). Mother Nature gets very creative before our births with out genitals and brain development. And these difference can be found throughout nature. Here is cool site talking about the science: http://drdrantz-scie...-sexuality.html